Sepia Lies Behind Blue Eyes
by Lovebites and Popcorn
Summary: The memory keeper is imprisoned in Lucifer’s playground and her only real friend is her worst nightmare.


**Sepia Lies Behind Blue Eyes**

_The memory keeper is imprisoned in Lucifer's playground and her only real friend is her worst nightmare. _

_**Author's note:**__ Can anyone guess the common denominator of my last three one-shots? She has a name. And I should probably mention that there is implied AkuRoku in this._

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His smile is cruelly sadistic, almost violent in nature, and Naminé can't help but shiver on the inside like he's somehow stolen all the heat from her body and turned her pure, innocent soul into a slab of contaminated ice. His black, spiderlily fingers extend to cup her chin roughly between thumb and forefinger and she freezes, unable to move, unable to tear her gaze away from him, as though masking her fear with bravery and forced courage would make everything so much less frightening and somehow more… physically _concrete_ in this grey-white mural-painted cavity of horrors and dreams.

She isn't even sure if this is really happening right now. Everything seems so illusory and colourlessly surreal here in this fortress of the forgotten and damned.

And she, with all her strait-laced idiosyncrasies, doesn't like the way _he's_ looking at her, as though she's some kind of prized entity made of golden sunsets and sapphire gemstones that he both cherishes and loathes deeply at the same time. The raw _emotion_ that radiates from his sinful stare makes her wilt and shrivel up and _want to die_. Because she knows dreadfully well that that kind of passion is not supposed to exist in him. Because she knows it's supposed to be everything other than _real_.

Because maybe she's jealous he can lie about it so well_._

And she cannot.

"I like your eyes," he murmurs quietly, sweetness dripping in rivulets. "They're so blue. Like the sky." And he grins, suddenly amused by that one statement and he chuckles to himself like it's some sick, sick personal joke. Then, he clucks his tongue disapprovingly and tightens his hold on her chin, making her wince. "But they're so, so _empty_. Like you want to find something and you don't even know what it is or where to look. So, so endlessly _blue_…"

Naminé's eyes dart to the floor, avoiding pools of green. Her voice trembles as she speaks up, with faint spirals of sympathy and slivers of sadness; all sentiments that she knows are simply a mocking sham. "That's not it at all." Audacity. Nerve. "You cannot make my eyes seem like somebody else's in yours," she all but stabs wildly, her face a blank, impassive canvas. Cold, collected, _heartless_. Her true birthmark. And it isn't a kept secret that she knows what she's uttered will provoke him.

Axel moves like the incarnation of lightning and slaps her hard across the face, his fingers leaving her skin as pale and bloodless and insipid as ever. Then he pulls at her hair and jerks her head back so that she's forced to look straight up into his eyes. A manifestation of irritation flickers to life and twists and warps his expression like dark smoke drifting across a blazing inferno.

"Look at me when I'm talking to you or I _will_ make you suffer for your insolence, understand, _witch_?" he snarls sharply.

When Naminé doesn't say anything, just stares back at him mutely, he pulls away from her and pats her on the head depreciatively, strokes her pale golden hair and smoothes out the kinks like an unspoken apology, like a volcano going back to sleep.

"I like your eyes," he says again, voice molten dark chocolate.

And she looks straight at him and replies with uncanny stiffness, "I hate you so much."

He says nothing for a moment, then pulls away and smirks knowingly.

"That's what he always tells me." He runs a hand along the pasty white skin of her exposed arm, leans down slowly and whispers into her ear like he's about to tell her a dirty little secret. "And do you think I _believe_ him?"

And Naminé realises that he's caught her white lie.

Deep down, the girl knows that really, her only true ally in this entire castle is The Flurry of Dancing Flames. She knows he'll never break her, wreck her, torment her like how the shadowed rose of death and his submissive queen bee both do. Surely. She knows this because it's all in her _eyes_. And he'll only dare to hurt her as much as he'll dare hurt _him-who-was-not-her_.

So she acknowledges her demonic sin and answers him resignedly, all poise and pretence crushed and burnt to a cinder.

"No, I don't think you do. There's nothing real to believe."

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_**Author's note:**__ 4:18 in the morning with Skillet, Billy Talent, Thousand Foot Krutch and a lack of caffeine. Thank you, come again. _


End file.
